All done. Unfortunately.

I am a little sad to report that my Olympic campaign is now complete. There were four girls that raced in the time trial on Friday at the training pool. I unfortunately came 4th which was Dissapointing. Especially considering it was my birthday! I went into the time trial feeling very confident, everything had been perfect in my build up right down to the warm up before the time trial. I just wasn't fast enough on the day and New Zealand needs their fastest team racing in the 4x200! I know that my girls are going to stand up and show the world what they are made of and I will be screaming the loudest in the stands!! After the trial I had to re-group pretty much instantaneously (had to have a quick visit to see mum and dad, to get their supportive words. Had an early bedtime while the opening ceremony was on and then got up and swam the 4x100 freestyle yesterday morning. The team didn't swim as fast as the time we swam at the NZ trials but we all got out there and performed as best we could. I wasn't very happy with my split, didn't feel great in the water. Was so awesome walking out on deck and hearing the crowd screaming. Really got me excited to race. So I am now done. I will be screaming all week for my team mates and helping in every way I can for them (might have to do a few food hall runs for them to ensure they are very rested), looking forward to watching all of the swimming! Thankyou so much everyone for your support over my build up for this meet, it has been a long one! Would not be able to believe in myself as much if I didn't have all my friends and family support and love coming my way. I am proud to call myself an Olympian and I know I will love every minute of this experience for the next 2 weeks!

Loving the village life!

Have now spent 24 hours in the Olympic village and so far has been up there with the best 24 hours of my life! The train ride from Belgium to London was a nice 2 hour trip that went fast. A bus and a nz support staff came and collected us from the train station and took us to the village. Was about a half hour bus ride but took much longer due to our bus containing 'radiation' apparently so it had to be checked for 20mins before was able to drive into the village. We then were able to go in and accreditation was completed very quickly which was very handy. We then were taken to food hall straight away!! The food hall is amazing! There are giant sections for Asian, African, halal, European and 'Britains best'. I just grabbed a plate of fruit and a delicious yoghurt muesli thing from mc cafe! There is every food you can imagine in the food hall and I am wry excited for after the swimming has finished to try everything I please. I think it would be very easy to pile on the weight if you don't watch yourself in the food hall! We then were shown our way to the kiwi tower and were welcomed by a haka from the support staff. The boys on our team performed a reply which was out of this world!! Sent shivers down my spine! We were then taken into a room for orientation and presented with a beautiful greenstone which really made me feel so proud of being a kiwi and being a part of this Olympic team. We were then shown to our rooms which was crazy, the beds were packed with free goodies including a phone and some speakers and there was the suitcase full of uniform! We spent a while trying it all on checking sizes were right. It is such a awesome uniform! A couple of us roamed the village for a little bit and it is so amazing. We booked in at the salon for nails to be done (free). Then went to dinner and then called it a night. This morning we went to the competition pool for the first time and it was very nice! Felt really good in the water and am so excited to race now! Counting down the hours! Will be relaxed for next couple of days and just get 100% prepared to race my best and do my country proud!

One more sleep

I now only have one more sleep before the team is leaving our pre camp in Belgium and heading to the Olympic village in London. Am feeling very very excited. Training camp has been going so well. I have been doing good times in my sets and am slowly feeling ready to race fast! The weather in Belgium has been quite Dissapointing, raining all of the time. It is a beautiful day outside today but is our last day here! Am really looking forward to tomorrow. The security checks etc will take a while and am looking forward to getting our uniform finally! And the goodie bags (word on the street is that we will be getting a new phone). I will be doing my first race on Friday, the day before the Olympics. It is the 200m free time trial to try for a spot in the 4x200 free relay team. It is also my birthday!! I will not be attending the opening ceremony which is a shame as am racing the very next morning in the 4x100 free. Have such exciting times ahead!!

End of the week

Due to my coach Mark Regans taper programme, he changes his week around so that the weekend for us is generally in the middle of the week depending on what day our first race is. This means that today is our Saturday! A few of the girls on the team and I are going to go and visit a city called Gent. We were taken there on saturday for a little bit and loved it so much we want to go back and look around(shop) more. Belgium pre camp so far has been going alright. Have been doing some really good sessions but also was hit with a tummy bug a few days ago so had to recover from that. Everything is still looking good however. Each day a few of us have been goinG on walks to ensure our legs can handle all the walking we will be doing in the village. There is a cute little farm thing next door to the sports complex with peacocks, lambs, goats, horses etc. something interesting we do in our days. We have exactly one week now until we leave Belgium and head on our way to the village in London which is getting very exciting! Can almost count the days on one hand.

Finally arrived in Belgium

The team and I have now finally arrived at the sports institute we are staying at for the next 14 days in Belgium. The travel was very long and the whole team was shattered by the end of it. We had one 12 hour flight from Auckland to LAX then a 10 hour flight from LAX to Heathrow, London and then a 1 hour flight from Heathrow to Brussels, Belgium(which to top a horrible day of traveling off it was delayed by 2 hours). We then were picked up from the airport by our sports physiologist, Tom V (who is from Belgium so came over a week earlier to set everything up), and then drive for an hour to a little town outside of Gent and arrived at the sports institute. Have jut finished my first session in the pool here, is such a nice pool with proper starting blocks and touch pads. There is an outdoor 50m pool we can use also. Hopefully will be a fun couple of weeks here in Belgium. Judging by the drive from the airport, Belgium is beautiful! Just hope it doesn't rain too much while we are here!

Two More Sleeps in New Zealand

We now have two more sleeps in New Zealand before we head on our way.  Training over the past couple of weeks since being back from camp has still been very tough and still going very hard and heavy in the weights room.  We are leaving Tuesday night at 9.30pm which is also the day our taper will begin.  We are flying to Heathrow and then onto Brussels and into our camp in Ghent, Belgium.  I drove down to Hamilton on Friday to swim in a couple of races in the Hamilton Winter Meet just to get some race practice.  Swam alright considering how tired and sore my body is.  Everything is looking good. 

Will post on here regularly throughout the olympic campaign.

Next stop Belgium!

Training Camp: COMPLETED

The NZ olympic swim team and I have now arrived home from swim camp last night.  I spent the last 18 days doing a very heavy workload of training in Cairns, Australia.  We trained 3 times a day alternating 3 times in the pool each day to 2 times in the pool and once in the gym.  It was very hard work but was very easy to be motivated knowing the olympics are now only a few weeks away!  We were initially supposed to travel to Canberra after our two week block of training camp to race at the Australian Grand Prix and then fly home today.  This was very quickly changed on the last day of training camp due to a couple of the Australian waterpolo team (training out of the Australian Institute of Sport in Canberra) were carrying whooping cough.  The Australian swim team called off the meet as they did not want whooping cough to be caught by any members of their team or other competitors at the grand prix meet.  The NZ coaches looked at all our options and decided to try their best and make a bad situation good and decided to stay in Canberra until we were able to fly straight home to NZ on Saturday.  They divided our team of 16 swimmers into two teams of 4 girls and 4 boys.  We had a very exciting and competitve duel meet at the pool we had been training in, competing in many different races to sore points for our team.  It was really fun but also very hard at the same time due to all of our bodies being totally shattered from training camp.

I am now home for two weeks, leaving again on the 10th of July for pre-camp in Belgium.  I am starting to get very excited now that training camp is complete.  It all went very well so my last couple of weeks of preparation will hopefully continue to go perfectly to ensure I am representing my country as best as I can.  The 4x100 freestyle team has been officially confirmed for the Olympics so I will definately be racing that race on the first day of competition, 28th of July.  Looking forward to these final stages of preparation as they are always the most enjoyable.  Very excited for the weeks ahead.